Bedrövelse
by Empatheia
Summary: -Crowley- These are days for living in.


**A/N: **For the April round of D.Gray-man flashfics on LiveJournal.

1.) There is some Crowley/Eliade in this. The fic is Crowley-centric, yes, but Crowley is Eliade-centric so it can't be helped.

2.) I know that in canon his name is supposed to be spelled Arystar Krory. I don't care. I hate that spelling with unfathomable depth, and so I will call him Crowley and you all will just have to deal. :)

3.) Bedrövelse means grief in Swedish. No, I don't speak Swedish, I 'm just a dictionary addict.

Enjoy!

**xxxxx**

_**Bedrövelse**_

**xxxxx**

_And all men kill the thing they love,_

_By all let this be heard,_

_Some do it with a bitter look,_

_Some with a flattering word,_

_The coward does it with a kiss,_

_The brave man with a sword!_

-Oscar Wilde, _the Ballad of Reading Gaol_

There are days he longs for his castle, now only ashes and scorched stones on a bare, lonely clifftop.

There are days he wishes for nothing more than the comforting murk of his windowless bedroom, the overgrown courtyard, the mad flowers that grew in the hallways, the familiar pathways worn into the flagstones. This world he finds himself hurtling through is entirely too foreign and unpredictable. There are no paths, no comforts, no time to remember the patterns of all the mazed woodland halls they trek through, unseeing.

He is glad now that he burned the castle when he left. If he hadn't, the temptation to go back to it may have become too much for him to bear.

So to comfort himself, instead of paths and rooms, he memorizes the expressions and faces of his companions until he can close his eyes and still see them, painted by his will on the backs of his eyelids. Soon they are familiar, and somehow because of that, he stops feeling unbalanced and lost when they pass through strange new locales.

Crowley turns his companions into his new castle... his new home, and learns to be almost content.

xxxxx

There are days he yearns for enemies.

They are the days when Eliade is strong in his memory, when he can smell her perfume in the late summer wildflowers and every woman in every town somehow reminds him of her. There are her hands, slender and markless and ungentle. There is her hair, brushed to shining and carefully shaped to curve across her pale shoulders. There are her eyes, tender and cruel all at once.

Then all he wishes for is an enemy, with gnashing teeth and murderous intent, to face so that he can forget all the sweetness he may once have known. He yearns for blood and the rending of flesh beneath his teeth. He yearns for the mindless fury of battle which erases all pains until the battle is done. He yearns for the Akuma, and there are always more Akuma.

But then he finds one, and it screams and twists and changes until there is nothing human in it, only darkness and pain, and that reminds him of her too.

There can be no peace for him on those days.

xxxxx

There are days, other days, when he lets himself grieve for Eliade.

They are different from the days when he cannot escape her. On these days, he goes to her instead of waiting for her memory to come to him.

He and his comrades come across a beautiful place, one Crowley would have loved to show her, and he closes his eyes and lets the bittersweet agony of grief overcome him. He continues walking, one foot in front of the other, at the back of the group so they will not see the tears running silently down his face unless they turn around.

He apologizes to her sometimes for running away from her memory. It seems an insult, but he has no choice. The pain is usually unbearable.

His body is unbreakable, but he has paid for it with a fragile heart.

xxxxx

There are days he is so angry he can hardly speak.

This world of men, though bereft of Eliade, is full of things he knows are still worth caring for.

Wide-eyed children, amazed at the bounty of new and amazing things to touch and taste and see and feel and hear. Great works of men: buildings which yearn upwards towards the sky, poems and tales and songs of heartbreaking loveliness, art which depicts the spirit of the truth rather than the vision of it.

People, who despite all their oddities and cruelties and blindnesses and hatreds, all their massive imperfections, are still capable of moments of truly perfect love and selflessness.

Having seen the world, or at least some of it, it makes head pound with rage to think of the selfishness of those select few who would turn it all to dust and ashes and drying blood.

Crowley will happily spill his own to protect the parts of the world he has met and learned and loved.

He realizes that his comrades will do the same, and understands then why he has followed them all this way.

xxxxx

There are days when death would be welcome.

Another battle, another frantic struggle for victory and the right to move forward, another soul he was too late to save... it makes him tired, fighting every day without appreciable results. His enemies are already dead. All he can give them is freedom, not life, and it drains the will to fight from him to realize that.

The worst thing, what really weighs him down until he is afraid his heaviness will sink him into the earth and trap him there, is that there are always more. Every new town they pass through, from hamlets to villages to cities to great metropolises, there are always new-made Akuma waiting for them.

Always, always more souls chained to bloody slavery that he was too late to save. He looks out over an endless future full of them and feels his knees weaken, his spine bow in premature defeat.

There are days, therefore, when he wishes he could lie down and surrender on his own terms, before he is beaten into the dust by the heavy march of inevitability.

He is not weak enough to give in, only weak enough to dream.

xxxxx

There are days when he is glad to be alive.

His comrades walk ahead of him, laughing, and turn to include him in their conversation. Their smiles are wide and careless, as though they know nothing of the danger behind and ahead of them. Crowley knows they are well aware. They have simply learned to enjoy what brief moments of peace are given them. He strives to follow their example, and sometimes he succeeds.

The sun is bright, the autumn foliage blazing gloriously in one last defiant stand against death, and the woods hold no enemies today. In the late afternoon warmth, the threat of the Earl seems far away, the destruction of humanity an unthinkable impossibility.

There was humanity before the Earl.

On days like this, he is quietly sure that there will be humanity after him.

xxxxx

There are days when he is swallowed by grief and darkness.

There are also days when he knows sweet contentment, and an easing of his pain.

There are days when he fights, and days when he does not.

These are days for living in.

And so, Crowley lives.

**XxxxxxX**

**A/N:** I'm not sure whether this is AR or what, but try not to think about exactly when it's set too hard. :)

I just noticed that this fic contains no italicized words. I feel totally old-school now.

Thanks for reading!


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